In an essay, he discusses why he decided to pull all copies of his first novel, "Rage," from sale.

"Of course, it's about a school shooting, and he talks about a kid who shows up in a school and shoots a lot of his classmates and his teachers," said Alex Green, owner of Back Pages Books in Waltham.

Green said King, a Maine native who is a gun owner, decided that the plot was too close for comfort.

"I don't envy him the fact that the world has changed so much that this is now within the realm of reality to the point that four kids who have committed school shootings have been found to own copies of the book," said Green.

"My book did not break (them) or turn them into killers," King wrote in his essay.

"They found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken. Yet I did see 'Rage' as a possible accelerant which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it," King wrote.

King called for three "reasonable measures" to curb gun violence in an essay titled "Guns," released Friday as a Kindle single through Amazon.

King said he wants background checks on all gun sales and bans on high-capacity magazines and military-style weapons like the rifle used in the Newtown shooting, which killed 20 children and six school officials.

King described a pattern of mass shootings in which anger and frustration give way to political rhetoric before discussions of gun control "disappear into the legislative swamp."

He said on his website: "If this helps provoke constructive debate, I've done my job."